UKRANIAN PRESIDENT YUSHCHENKO AND PARLIAMENTARY SPEAKER LYTVYN ATTEND A NATIONAL DEFENCE AND SECURITY COUNCIL IN KIEV

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko (L) and Parliamentary speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn attend a meeting of the National Defence and Security Council in Kiev January 18, 2006. The meeting was devoted to the effects of political turmoil on social policy a week after parliament dismissed the government. (UPI Photo/Sergey Starostenko)

Volodymyr Mykhailovych Lytvyn (Ukrainian: Володимир Михайлович Литвин) (born April 28, 1956) is a Ukrainian politician and the current Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian parliament. Having previously served in that position from 2002 until 2006, he was re-elected in December 2008 after his party agreed to join the former coalition of Yulia Tymoshenko in an expanded capacity. From 1994 to 1999, Lytvyn was the aide to President Leonid Kuchma and, later, the head of his office.

Lytvyn was born in Sloboda-Romanivska village in the Novohrad-Volynskyi District of the Zhytomyr Oblast. His father, Mykhaylo Klymovych (born 1930) and mother Olga Andriyivna (born 1929) were peasants. Lytvyn graduated from the Kiev University (Faculty of History) in 1978. He is married to Tetyana Kostyantynivna (born 1960), an economist. Their daughter Olena (born 1982) is a student, so does their son Ivan (born 1989)

Mr Lytvyn started his career as a political analyst within the Central Committee of the Ukrainian SSR's Communist Party (a division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union).

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